#64 / Apocalypse Fatigue

"Apocalypse Fatigue" is "a real thing," says Damaris Zehner, writing online in Resilience. Her article is titled, "Apocalypse Fatigue, Selective Inattention, and Fatalism: The Psychology of Climate Change" Zehner outlines the problem as follows:

Apocalypse fatigue ... [is] the exhaustion of having to make endless moral choices when they don’t seem to make a difference, and it’s the psychological rebellion against always having to worry about every choice when other people’s lack of concern negates your efforts. The fatigue is physical as well as psychological. The worry and adrenaline that keep you up at night after reading the latest harrowing report leave you exhausted the next day; faced with the endless decisions about what to buy and how to live, you just put your head down on your arms and give up.

Zehner is an associate professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, and is the author of The Between Time. Her blog, Integrity of Life focuses on sane living in the present and in the coming post-industrial world. She has a few good suggestions about how to combat the feeling of "Apocalypse Fatigue," including an admonistion to "be grateful," and I think her article is worth reading. 

My own prescription is one that readers of this blog have heard before. Since we create the human world in which we most immediately live, our sense of "fatalism," which is at the root of "Apocalypse Fatigue," is best overcome when we engage with others to change the realities we find oppressive. 

And that definitely includes climate change.

Plus....

Be grateful! That is good advice.

Image Credit:

http://apocalypsefatigue.org